Note: This is a guest post by Stuart Mills of Unlock the Door where he is not only an amazing blogger with impressive wisdom and insight into the human condition, but is one outstanding guy as well.

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” – Mark Twain

Ever felt like things are so bad that you have no idea what to do?

We’ve all been in situations where we fear the worst. Sometimes these ‘worst-case scenarios’ take place in reality, but more often than not they appear in only one place – our minds.

Our Imagined Troubles

Life is certainly full of surprises, lots of unexpected turns round the corner, very few of which we actually anticipate. Sure, we anticipate all sorts of troubles. We imagine that the house will burn down, or that our relatives will be involved in a car accident, or any other sort of event that we deeply fear. And yet how often do we actually experience these events? How often do we go through the same traumas in reality as we do in our minds?

The answer is: rarely. We rarely encounter our daily worries and stresses in external reality, because our internal realities are far more exaggerated.

When I say ‘exaggerated’, I mean that our imaginations have a tendency to get carried away, to the point of borderline ridiculous. For example, if we hear of a family member being involved in a car accident, we start to assume the worse, such as fatalities or permanent disabilities. However, the reality may be that no-one was hurt or that only minor injuries were suffered.

We may even find ourselves automatically assuming the worst possible outcome even when we don’t have all the details. And when something is likely to go wrong, but it hasn’t happened yet, we again assume that it will go wrong in the worst possible way. We seem to prefer placing our ultimate judgment on the extreme end of the scale.

Why do we do this? Why do we torture ourselves over minor and imagined incidents? I believe this is because we don’t have the self-belief that we can handle the troubles and stresses of our lives. We don’t think we can get through our day if something unexpected comes our way. If it messes up our routine and isn’t immediately beneficial, then it’s to be treated with suspicion, caution, doubt, and perhaps even fear.

When We Don’t Trust Ourselves

This attitude stems from our strong desire to hold some form of routine in our lives – if something new enters our life and we haven’t chosen it to be there, then we regard it with distrust until it ‘proves’ itself to be beneficial to us.

As we believe a routine, and some sense of ‘order’, is vital to our existence, we instinctively reject anything that would challenge this order. When a ‘problem’ unexpectedly enters our lives, we try and reject it by pretending that the problem doesn’t exist, or that it’s someone else’s problem and not ours. This attitude means that we avoid taking responsibility for something that is going to happen, no matter how hard we may try to avoid it. And the harder we try, the harder it will be when we finally come face-to-face with a problem so big and so important that it can be ignored no longer.

And why do we avoid these unexpected situations, problems, and chances to assume responsibility? It’s because we don’t trust ourselves. We don’t trust ourselves to handle whatever life may throw at us. And when we no longer trust ourselves in a situation, real or imaginary, we lose all chance of learning and growing from the experience. We are instead far more likely to ‘bury our heads in the sand’.

The problems that we build up in our heads become so great that we have no idea how we could possibly hope to handle them. Once this happens, we lose whatever chance we had of trusting ourselves to resolve the problem and be at peace with ourselves. Without self-trust, life itself becomes one long problem.

So we need to trust ourselves. We need to believe in our ability to tackle the problems that do become real, and conquer the problems in our head. To do this, we must differentiate between real problems, and imaginary problems.

Embrace The Problem

I’m going to suggest a method that will help you not only reduce the fear of problems that have yet to happen, or likely won’t happen at all, but also enable you to learn more about yourself.

The method is this: expose the imaginary problems in your mind, and embrace them.

At first attempt, this may be harder than it sounds. It can be hard to focus on imaginary problems when they pop up so frequently in your head. But there are two keys to making this work, and they are awareness and persistence.

To use the key of awareness, whenever a problem is exaggerated in your head or appears from nowhere, focus your full attention onto it. Don’t try to push it to the back of your mind, or pretend everything’s fine. Embrace the imagined situation in your head, and explore if fully. As you do so, discover where your fear actually lies. Is it the fear of losing a loved one? Or the fear of failing an exam? Or is it a fear that people will criticise you and laugh at you if you do something your own way? Whatever the fear, recognise it as that which is truly making you afraid. Once you have done this, you have exposed the illusion for what it really is, and you can now see its core.

This is where the second key, persistence, comes in. Now that you can see the source behind your fear, embrace it. Embrace the reason why you are afraid, and recognise it what it truly is – a fear. Whatever your fear, embrace it as a part of who you are as a human being. There’s nothing wrong with you for having fears – you are just like everyone else.

This will take a lot of persistence, especially when starting out, but with ‘persistent embracing’, you can finally begin to accept your fears as a part of who you are, and the imaginary problems will then slow down their rapid bursts, before calming down completely.

Over To You

This is my method for addressing imaginary problems and eliminating the worry and stress that they cause, but do you have another method for cutting out the troubles in our head that never give us a moment’s peace?

If you do, please share them in the comments below. Ken and I will be happy to hear them.

Stuart Mills is a personal development enthusiast who wants to help you unlock your potential so you can help yourself. You can find him at Unlock The Door where he makes his virtual home, and at Twitter.

Welcome, Stu! You make my site better by your presence, my friend! Thank you for the outstanding article. Fear truly is crippling and you walk us through an effective process for reducing many of life’s problems to the thoughts we have about them, thereby removing the crippling effect. Well done!

We often think the worse in situations, even when we know that what we’re doing is right for us. It’s a natural tendency to try and safe-guard ourselves by worrying about what ‘could’ be wrong, so we then try and prevent it as much as possible.

But this only works to withdraw us from life, it doesn’t enhance life at all. To live true to ourselves, we must plough on regardless of, and through our fears.

Hi Debbie! I LOVE the way you said that, “if we let it.” That is the golden key that will unlock so many doors in our lives, so much opportunity and possibility. So much of life’s greatest obstacles are voluntary. That’s a hard doctrine for many to accept, but like Nelson Mandela so eloquently stated, we truly are the masters of our souls.

Hi Stuart,
Great post. Extremely time for me. I loved what you said about our imaginations having a tendency to get carried away, to the point of borderline ridiculous. I have been there many times and it has stopped me from doing many things. For much of 2011, fear held me captive. It was also a year of transition, transformation and rebirth. 2012, I have declared to be fearless. So I’ll answer your question in two ways:

1. If you find that you are afraid to do something that you know will move your life forward, DO it anyway.
2. Avoid getting too much in your head and making things seem worse than they are. The sooner you stop the madness, the sooner you can move forward to creating the life that you want. 🙂Lisa H. Wright recently posted … What Would You Do if You Had Total Financial Freedom

I like what you said for your second point – the sooner we stop the madness, the sooner we can get on with life. That’s certainly true as we tend to live life in our heads, rather than in the real world where there are many different perspectives, and not just ours.

Once we realise that our perspective isn’t the reality of the world, we can begin to reclaim our life.

Stu did write up a great post. Here’s the way I look at it. There’s reality. And there’s our interpretation of it. We can change reality. Or we can change our interpretation of it. I think the latter is a whole lot easier than the former.

Stu nailed this one so perfectly too. We don’t react to life as it is. We react to it as we THINK it is. Our perceptions ARE the world to us even if not truly a mirror image of it. And it’s in that interpretive framework that most of the problems begin. We worry what others think and how we’ll do and what failure would mean if we miss the target. We are so often our own worse enemies.

So I’m thrilled that you are going to make 2012 a fearless year of action (or, perhaps) a year you FEEL fear, but ignore it and push forward anyway. That. after all, is what courage is all about!

Great post Stuart and you covered so many important points. From my own experiences, I know that what has probably caused so much heartache is worrying I wouldn’t be able to handle unexpected problems. However, the truth is as you explained, problems rarely do happen and when they do, we have unlimited resources to handle them, if only we trust ourselves that we have them.

Hi Hiten! This is what I tend to do with situations that may not work out for me or where fear is welling up inside. I ask myself this question: “What is the worst likely case scenario?” When I have that in mind, I ask a follow-up question: “Can I handle it?” If so, it’s a no-brainer. I jump in! I throw out the unlikely-to-happen worse case scenarios because they are so unlikely. I can sit inside, after all, to avoid the unlikelihood of being struck by a meteor. Or I can go outside even though there is the remote possibility. We can all choose to live life unafraid of life’s stray meteors because they just don’t hit us very often.

I do wonder if the media’s compulsion with printing and reporting on all the bad stuff around us doesn’t create the impression in our minds of a life that is pretty darn dangerous. Perhaps that heightens our anxieties and fears.

I agree with what you’re saying about the media. Imagine if all newspapers and TV news had to broadcast positive, inspiring and empowering stories. I wonder how this would help people to change?Hiten recently posted … Bouncing Back from Interview Rejections

You want to hear something sad? It was tried back in the 1970s, I think. Some rich guy was tired of the negative news and founded a newspaper that featured only positive stories. Guess what happened. Yep, went bankrupt. No one wanted to read it. Hmmm …

It’s a strange thing that by worry we believe we actually gain some control over our problems. This is a false sense of security. For me I have learned that I can either solve the problem or I can’t solve the problem. When I can solve the problem I focus on finding a solution, when I can’t solve the problem, it’s time to accept and embrace what I can’t control. This has been a major help.Joe recently posted … How to Meditate: For the Type-A Personality

I think the reason we torture ourselves is because it fills a need (usually to confirm the idea we have that we are bad in some way).

We also may want to keep ourselves safe. This is a good thing in my view – we can learn safely and make small experiments.

I think that the problems in our head are there for a reason and it is worth knowing this reason. We can then address it.

I agree very much that we need to embrace those imagined problems. I guess my method is looking for the purpose or something, perhaps slightly different to what you are proposing, or perhaps just a different way of phrasing it.Evan recently posted … Everybody Changes

I have personally encountered times when I have felt I wasn’t good enough, so I do agree with what you say. It’s a human condition to think we aren’t up to scratch with the required level of living, so we don’t try at all. These imagined problems get larger and out of control.

Embracing them is the first step to realising that they are in our head and nowhere else. Once done, I believe we can move onto the problems that ‘do’ exist in the real world, and work to resolve them.

You make an important point about keeping ourselves safe. I know people who do a lot of worrying about safety. And while there certainly needs to be a reasonable amount of concern about staying well and alive, it can become quite obsessive and overemphasized as well. Precautions should be taken to minimize the chance of life falling apart. But a risk-free life is one that is lived in a hermetically sealed bubble, never experiencing life at the point of its possibilities.

It’s here where Stu’s advice becomes especially important to those who worry themselves into proverbial corners. By differentiating between likely problems worthy of some precautionary measures and those that are very unlikely, we can stop living very overly limiting lives and begin to feel more confident and comfortable walking out into the daylight of life.

You make another important point when you suggest for such people that small steps of experimentation into that light of day is how to overcome those fears and anxieties.

Speaking of light, thanks for always throwing a new angle of light at the topics we cover here!

Spot on with your descriptions of how we imagine so much about and more than our actual situation. And at the core it’s about fear and lack of trust in self as you said.

I’ve found, reminding myself of my ability to deal with it (or inability to deal with it too; ie to know what we can’t change is important too) helps calm my mind and body. I’m calling on spirit/ God with my words and intentions. I pause, breath deeply, focus within and say something encouraging. This usually creates a shift in feeling that sets the stage for a shift in perspective. Then I move on with my day, addressing the problem if possible or letting it go.

It sounds like you have a good system set up for dealing with the over-active imagination! Well done, you’re in a better position than most other people who would prefer to let their ‘imaginary problems’ run riot in their heads.

I agree with Stu. So many people simply allow their imaginations to redefine reality, accepting their overactive imaginations about reality as mirror images of life. And so they never slow down long enough to analyze them, to look at them squarely, to question their validity.

I especially like your last statement: “Then I move on with my day, addressing the problem if possible or letting go.” Addressing problems is the best way to reduce them and their emotional impact. But also knowing what problems are within our spheres of influence and which are not and can be let go, is a sign of emotional maturity that too few seem to have developed.

I love that Twain quote, also attributed to Montaigne. That was my life, full of imagined disasters that I spent all my time rehearsing for. Whew! Much better to deal with what actually happens, which is usually very good!Galen Pearl recently posted … In the Softness

It must be such a frustrating way to live, always jumping at shadows and shadows of shadows of imagined terrors lurking behind every corner. I’m so glad you were able change that pattern of thought. Like you and Stu said, life is so much sweeter dealing with it as it is without having to rehearse for all its imagined disasters. (well said, Galen!)

I used to keep myself up at night worrying. One night, as I lay there staring at the ceiling in the dark in a cold sweat the best (for me!) coping strategy ever came to mind: I asked myself, “What was the last thing you worried about that actually happened?”. Ten minutes later I was still trying to think of something. I was then able to let it go. After that, worrying just didn’t seem to come around as much any more.Tammy recently posted … Different Times Equal Different People

What a brilliant question to ask yourself! It’s like a violent slap in the face of our baseless fears, forcing our minds to adjust to reality, to see it for what it is right then and there, to answer the unanswerable, making our minds accept its unanswerability due to the false assumptions and unreasonable fears it’s based on and shining a light on the baselessness of those fears. (Whew! That was a mouthful!)

I personally try to live in the moment. Whenever I start to think about issues that ‘may’ happy I quickly revert my attention back to the present moment where that possibility is just that – a possibility. The only reality is here and now.

My husband has been off work for a few months and I know that our ability to live in the moment has kept our sanity in place. (He got an amazing job today by the way!)

But if we had let ourselves get carried away we could have pictured all sorts of negative things like losing our house or going bankrupt. Of course the likelihood of that happening was slim but it’s one of those things you start to imagine when you lose a huge source of income. And it could have caused a huge strain on our individual stress level and our relationship if we had not practiced being mindful and living in the moment. Whatever will be will be, was our mantra – all we can do is focus on the now.Kari recently posted … Finding Answers: Where and How

First off, congratulations on your husband finding new work! I hope it satisfies his need for meaningful work as well as bringing in the money!

Living in the present moment is something we all could do with, and yet very few of us practice it. We don’t get enough chance to work on it, or we’re bombarded with external problems and chores that only assist in stressing our already troubled minds. It seems for some people that ‘rest’ is a foreign concept.

For these people, I’d suggest cutting out what isn’t necessary in their lives, one thing at a time. Freeing up more space in the day will mean more opportunity to be in the present moment. And the more we practice being in the present, the better we get at it.

Living in the moment is a great way to live much of the time (I’m personally fine thinking of other things very much outside of the moment while I’m doing the dishes, for example :)), but all our worries live in the future and all our regrets live in the past. So living in the now is a great way to leave the past buried there and and the future waiting till we arrive at it.

not necessarily another method – but i try to see my worries in the big picture. take a step back and i find that a lot of my worries are little things and even if it did happen, doesnt really matter
then i stop worrying…
Noch Noch

When we view things in the big picture, compared to many other situations in the world today, it doesn’t look that bad. We can get by if we have a healthy perspective on things – the healthier our outlook, the healthier we feel.

Isn’t perspective a powerful thing? Get a little, and our problems suddenly seem to shrink to manageable sizes. It reminds me of Covey’s example of the guy who complains about the dark and uninviting lobby of a particular hotel until the bellboy suggests he remove his sunglasses. When we see things more clearly, as they really are, so often the reality is so much better than the fear about the reality.

Thank you Noch for always shedding light on the topic! Terse and wise!

I see that you are pointing the finger at me while writing this post! 😉

At the last job, the stress level was so much that I came to a point where I was blaming everything else for anything going wrong. Its like I needed a punching bag. And whatever trouble came my way, I was fighting back rather than solving it through. Some how I blew up the problem in my head and refused to believe that there MIGHT BE a solution.

The technique you mention here is very very effective but it does need a lot of persistence and determination to make it work. I haven’t practiced it much, but I am motivated to at least try it regularly.

I’m going to jump in here before Stu shows up so it doesn’t doesn’t take another three days before I reply. Things have been busy lately. But you nailed the problem right on the head, Hajra. Almost all of life’s most difficult challenges can be made very easy by simply removing the need to repeat the process indefinitely. It’s the consistent application of ideas that make them difficult to incorporate into our lives. We’re all like that too. But when we stick to it, it slowly becomes a habitual expression of who we’ve become. It becomes a characteristic or trait, rather than an external thing we’re forcing ourselves to do. But the habit comes.It does turn into a trait. So keep at it!

And thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, here. Stu is an amazing guy with amazing ideas for unlocking our potentials and guiding us in taking the next steps in our lives.

Thank you for the guest post, Stuart! I really appreciate the wisdom and insight you bring to the personal development community. And thank you for sharing that insight here with my readers. You are a force for good and I appreciate our friendship.

indeed- our internal realities often are disillusioned, and we worry ourselves unnecessarily, draining our own energy. my shrink always asked me “is there any evidence that this worry would happen?”
and if not, why am I worried at all?

What a great question to always have handy whenever we find ourselves fearful and worried! Once we realize the likelihood that the worse-case-scenario is so highly unlikely, it’s easier to step away from the anxiety and move forward. Thank you so much for sharing this, Noch!

Leave a response

A Walk Through HappinessGet my FREE eBook and monthly newsletter by subscribing below!

Email Address*

First Name

Your email will NEVER be shared with anyone

About Me

My name is Ken Wert, the founder of M2bH. My purpose here is to teach you how to live a richer life of greater purpose and meaning, of mind-blowing possibility and deeper, more soul-satisfying happiness than you ever dreamt was possible. Join us on this happy adventure as you learn how to unlock your hidden potential to enjoy the rewards of a life well lived. Read more ...